COACHES HOT SEAT

“Seems to me that if you’re afraid or living with some big fear, you’re not really living. You’re only half alive. I don’t care if it’s the boss you’re scared of or a lot of people in a room or diving off of a dinky little board, you gotta get rid of it. You owe it to yourself. Makes sort of a zombie out of you being afraid. I mean you want to be free, don’t you? And how can you if you are scared? That’s prison. Fear’s a jailer. Mind now, I’m not a professor on the subject. I just found it out for myself. But that’s what I think.”

And

“If you’re afraid of anything, why not take a chance and do the thing you fear. Sometimes it’s the only way to get over being afraid.”

And

“Let each man hear his own music and live by it. The drums roll one way for one man, I guess, and another way for another. You have to listen to your own.”

And

“In life quality is what counts, not quantity.”

And

“Audacity is a tactical weapon. Nine times out ten it will throw the enemy off-balance and confuse him.”

And

“The true meaning of America, you ask? It’s in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman’s badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper… In all these things, and many more, you’ll find America. In all these things, you’ll find freedom. And freedom is what America means to the world. And to me.”

“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”

And

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

And

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.”

And

“The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”

And

‘If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

And

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”

And

“Leaders grasp nettles.”

And

“The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.”

And

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

And

“Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.”

And

“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”

And

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”

And

“Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

And

“Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.”

And

“First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.”

And

“Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.”

And

“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”

And

“There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.”

And

“Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.”

“Take risks. Ask big questions. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not reaching far enough.”

And

“Why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company’s existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being.”

And

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”

And

“To remain static is to lose ground.”

And

“A group of people get together and exist as an institution we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately – they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental.”

And

“The greatest success goes to the person who is not afraid to fail in front of even the largest audience.”

And

“Set out to build a company and make a contribution, not an empire and a fortune.”

And

“A company that focuses solely on profits ultimately betrays both itself and society.”

And

11 Simple Rules

“1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation – the first requisite – for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be “a breeze.”

2. Build up the other person’s sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him.

3. Respect the other man’s personality rights. Respect as something sacred the other fellow’s right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.

4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves – contempt for the egotistical “phony” who stoops to it.

5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle – to your disadvantage – for years.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn’t want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him to embrace a higher working goal – a standard, an ideal – and he will do his own “making over” far more effectively than you can do it for him.

7. Try to understand the other person. How would you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see the “whys” of him you can’t help but get along better with him.

8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln’s famous self-instruction: “I do not like that man; therefore I shall get to know him better.”

9. Take care with the little details. Watch your smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces, names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them until they become a natural part of your personality.

10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect, and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”

And

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.” State of Fear

And

“It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”

And

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.” The Lost World

“The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.” Jurassic Park

And

“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.” Jurassic Park

And

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”

And

“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.” The Lost World

And

“Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.” Eaters of the Dead

And

“It’s hard to decide who’s truly brilliant; it’s easier to see who’s driven, which in the long run may be more important.” Congo

And

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

And

“The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature–all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn’t care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal’s behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes exinct.” Congo

And

“In the corner store we pulled fat bottles of water from the shelves. No one thinks it’s weird that we have to buy clean water, and that’s how I know we’re going to hell.”

And

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

And

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

And

“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.” The Lost World

And

“All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.” The Lost World

And

“Anyone who says he knows God’s intention is showing a lot of very human ego.” Next

And

“Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet – or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.” Jurassic Park

And

“In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.” Timeline

And

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It’s the most important thing that happens, and it’s the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.” The Lost World

And

“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.”

And

“All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.” Disclosure

And

“A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They’ll say, ‘You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?’ They’ll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies… And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else.” The Lost World

And

“Exercise invigorates the body and sharpens the mind.”

And

“Nobody dares to solve the problems-because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.” State of Fear

And

“Working inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working.”

And

“His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success–or the most to lose from failure.” Congo

And

“The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”

And

“The purpose of history is to explain the present – to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power – profound power. The power to define a whole society.” Timeline

And

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

Frank Thomas played quarterback for Knute Rocke at Notre Dame from 1920 to 1922. According to Rockne, Thomas was the smartest player he ever coached. Thomas’s best friend and roommate at Notre Dame was George “The Gipper” Gip.

Frank Thomas was the head football coach at Alabama from 1931 to 1946 putting up records of…

Overall: 115 – 24 – 7

SEC: 68 – 18 – 3

2 National Championships

Frank Thomas coached Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama who played for the Tide between 1933 – 1935 which included the 1934 Rose Bowl win over Stanford and the National Championship in the same year (which Coaches Hot Seat wrote about HERE in late November of last year)

Frank Thomas Quotes

“Keep the players high. Make practice a pleasure, not a lark. Be a disciplinarian, but not a slave driver. It’s better to have a short, full practice than a long lazy one.”

And

“No matter what the other fellow does on the field, don’t let him lure you into a fight. Uphold your dignity.”

And

“Proper conditioning is that fleeting moment between getting ready and going stale.”

“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”

And

“Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.”

And

“It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.”

And

“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.”

And

“The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.”

And

“It was a small victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.”On his 1944 acquittal from a court-martial for refusing to go the back of a military bus upon boarding it near Fort Hood, TX on July 6, 1944

“Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.”

And

“Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace, The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things.”

And

“Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.”

And

“I want to do it because I want to do it.”

And

“In soloing – as in other activities – it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.”

And

“Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.”

And

“Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.”

And

“Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.”

And

“Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.”

And

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.”

And

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.”

And

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”

And

“The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.”

And

“There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls.”

And

“There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.”

And

“Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.”

And

“Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

And

“Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.”

And

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.”

And

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

And

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.”

And

“In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful “break” was apt to lurk just around the corner.”

And

“The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay with courage to behold restless day and count it fair.”

And

“Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.”

And

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

And

“Worry retards reaction and makes clear-cut decisions impossible.”

And

“…decide…whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying….”

And

“Not much more than a month ago I was on the other shore of the Pacific, looking westward. This evening, I looked eastward over the Pacific. In those fast-moving days which have intervened, the whole width of the world has passed behind us -except this broad ocean. I shall be glad when we have the hazards of its navigation behind us.” — Amelia Earhart, several days before she left for Howland Island and disappeared

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

And

“The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.”

And

“Most people don’t read editorial pages. I think I must have been 40 before I even looked at an editorial page.”

And

“If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.”

And

“On Wall Street he and a few others – how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that… Masters of the Universe.”

And

“I’m a great believer in outlines.”

And

“Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.”

And

“I never forget. I never forgive. I can wait. I find it very easy to harbor a grudge. I have scores to settle.”

And

“God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.”

And

“American government is like a train on a track. You have the people on the left shouting; you have the people on the right. But the train’s on track. They just keep ploughing ahead.”

And

“So many people in this country have a dual loyalty. They have loyalty to America, but they also are determined to have their parade up Fifth Avenue once a year… a Cuban parade or a Puerto Rican parade – many other countries. So they really don’t forget.”

And

“To me, the great joy of writing is discovering. Most writers are told to write about what they know, but I still love the adventure of going out and reporting on things I don’t know about.”

And

“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America — that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.”

And

“This is man, who, if he can remember ten golden moments of joy and happiness out of all his years, ten moments unmarked by care, unseamed by aches or itches, has power to lift himself with his expiring breath and say: “I have lived upon this earth and known glory!”

And

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years”

And

“A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.”

And

“We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.”

And

“America – It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time”

And

“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.”

And

“There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.”

And

“There are some people who have the quality of richness and joy in them and they communicate it to everything they touch. It is first of all a physical quality; then it is a quality of the spirit.”

And

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”

And

“Chuck Yeager: Hey, RidleyColonel Ridley: YeahChuck Yeager: You got any Beemans?Colonel Ridley: I might have a stickChuck Yeager: Loan me some. I’ll pay you back later.Colonel Ridley: Fair Enough.Chuck Yeager: I think there’s a plane over here with my name on it.”Colonel Ridley: Now you’re talking.”

And

“You never realize how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes.”

And

“Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.”

And

“I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.”

And

“None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody’s thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that’s what he’s going to do on this trip, kick asses. He’s going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, ‘I’m sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I’m not sorry I’m an ass-kicker. That’s what I do, I kick people in the ass.’ Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there’s not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we’re going to wail with on this whole trip.”

And

“[Aldous Huxley] compared the brain to a ‘reducing valve’. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man’s potential experience without his even knowing it. We’re shut off from our own world.”

And

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. ”

And

“(W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I’m feeling inspired. It’s mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write.”

And

“Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later… that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.”

And

“The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.”

And

“America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!”

And

“Inman was Old Atlanta, insofar as there was any Old Atlanta. Atlanta had never been a true Old Southern city like Savannah or Charleston or Richmond, where wealth had originated with the land. Atlanta was an offspring of the railroad business. It has been created from scratch barely 150 years ago, and people had been making money there on the hustle ever since. The place had already run through three names. First they called it Terminus, because that was where the railroad ended. Then they named it Marthasville, after the wife of the governor. Then they called it Atlanta, after the Western and Atlantic railroad and on the boosters’ pretext that the rail link with Savannah made it a tantamount to a port on the Atlantic Ocean itself. The Armholsters had hustled and boosted with the best of them, Charlie had to admit. Inman’s father had built up a pharmaceuticals company back at the time when that was not even a well-known industry, and Inman had turned it into a chemicals conglomerate, Armaxco. Right now he wouldn’t mind being in Inman’s shoes. Armaxco was so big, so diverse, so well established, it was cycleproof. Inman could probably go to sleep for twenty years and Armaxco would just keep chugging away, minting money. Not that Inman would want to miss a minute of it. He loved all of those board meetings too much, loved being up on the dais at all those banquets too much, loved all those tributes to Inman Armholster the great philanthropist, all those junkets to the north of Italy, the south of France, and God knew where else on Armholster’s Falcon 900, all those minions jumping every time he so much as crooked his finger. With a corporate structure like Armaxco’s beneath him, Inman could sit on that throne of his as long as he wanted or until he downed the last mouthful of lamb shanks and mint jelly God allowed him – whereas he, Charlie, was a one-man band! You had to sell the world on…..yourself! Before they could lend you all that money, they had to believe in….you! They had to think you were some kind of omnipotent, flaw-free genius. Not my corporation but Me, Myself & I! His mistake was that he had started believed it himself, hadn’t he……Why had he ever built a mixed-use development out in Cherokee County crowned with a forty-story tower and named it after himself? Croker Concourse! No other Atlanta developer had ever dared display that much ego, whether he had it or not. And now the damned thing stood there, 60 percent empty and hemorrhaging money.”A Man In Full